


peace be with you

by blackeyedblonde



Category: True Detective
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Churches & Cathedrals, Domestic Bliss, Future Fic, Husbands, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 10:04:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13144350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/pseuds/blackeyedblonde
Summary: Maybe the ambiguity Marty feels is a reflection more on himself than anything that has to do with the other man, but part of him still can’t shake the idea that he and Rust believe insomething. Mutual illusions, his inner philosopher says in an all too familiar voice, and Marty physically turns his head to move away from the thought.Maybe it’s just that neither of them have figured out what to call it yet.





	peace be with you

**Author's Note:**

> the most humble and modest Christmas offering for TD fandom, who I still love dearly. I wish I could've written something more but time got away from me yet again. thank you to the wonderful @allthesamedream for inspiring some dialogue herein :) Merry Christmas!

   
  
Up until the very last Christmas before she passed, from the time she was a young and unmarried woman ‘til the time her hair had gone thin and white as snow, Deidre Hart watched Christmas Day strike on the clock from a pew in the heart of midnight mass.

Marty remembers those far-off nights, filled with boyish excitement and some magic vibration he’d felt thrumming in his hands and feet as he thundered up the stairs and hopped into bed after hanging his stocking above the fireplace. His mother would come to tuck him in late in the evening on Christmas Eve, already wearing her white gloves and prettiest emerald-colored church dress even though dusk had fallen hours ago. Her yellow hair would fall against his forehead as she leaned down to kiss him goodnight and the violet smell of her perfume would linger long after she’d backed the Buick out of the driveway and headed for town.

She’d be back on Christmas morning when Marty woke up early—still refined and with her hair in waves around her shoulders, wrapped in her dressing gown and smiling if not a little tired around the edges of her eyes while she watched him tear into boxes under the tinseled tree. Marty’s father never went with her to the midnight services, though he somehow always seemed more weary, wearing fatigue like a shabby overcoat he never took off. That was the way of things.

That was also many years ago.

When Deidre passed on in 2009, Marty hadn’t been to church in a decade or more, much less a midnight mass in something like half a lifetime. There’d been that stint around ’95 when he’d gone to Sunday sermons, some of his reformed better-man bullshit and something he doesn’t exactly look back on with any sense of purity or pride nowadays, but it hadn’t lasted long in the end.

It wasn’t until his mother was dead and gone that he began to try and get a better grip on her memory, already running a little too late like a lot of other things in his life. He’d sold her house and given away most everything that wasn’t bolted to the ground, had other faceless people come in and box up her life’s remnants and pack it into the back of a truck. He’d kept her wedding ring and his father’s gold band, but that’d been about it save for a few odds and ends that wound up in the attic. Material things could only provide so much solace, and Marty’d thought he sounded a hell of a lot like Rust thinking shit like that, even though he hadn’t heard Rust’s voice in seven years by then.

But it was a kick enough in the ass for him to start doing things as his mother might’ve done them. Another Christmas spent alone, maybe, but he’d tried to do his part and donated to the women’s and children’s home in Lafayette. Bought a whole holiday dinner through some charity service, goddamn roasted ham and all, and had it delivered to a poor backwater family he’d never even see or meet.

That was the same year he fought himself for two hours the night before Christmas, pacing around his whitewashed empty condo until he was sure he’d worn a groove in the carpet, partway dressed in ironed slacks and an undershirt he was already starting to sweat through. He’d looked up the local church service times three times in forty-five minutes just to be sure they were right, even considered calling the front office but hung up the phone halfway through dialing. Nobody would care who he was, nobody had to know he was only going to a Catholic mass to try and reach back through time and reclaim some distant memory of his mother. Nobody would ask. None of it mattered. It was hard enough admitting that truth to himself, much less a stranger.

At a quarter to eleven he buttoned into his dress shirt and combed his hair. Got his suit jacket out of the closet and draped it over his arm instead of putting it on. Felt like the loneliest goddamn sad sack of an asshole in the world the whole way there, and then sat in the second-to-last pew in the back of the garlanded church and let things happen around him.

The choir sang and the candles burned golden. The priest spoke about the holy child and humble beginnings, angels and peace, for all that was to be thankful for and for gifts that don’t come wrapped with a bow but with light. It was worship without fanfare, and for that Marty was thankful. He watched the people rise and sing together at the stroke of midnight and stood in his pew, alone, out of modest respect more than anything. He didn’t sing, but his eyes stung a little while the church hall filled with one final swell of music.

Must’ve been all the fuckin’ incense they were burning, he told himself, feeling both heavy and scrubbed raw as he walked back out to his car in early hours of a cold Christmas morning. And then he went back the next year, and again the year after that.  
  


* * *  
  


The clock has already pushed past ten when Rust looks up from the book in his lap, peering over to where Marty’s sitting back in his recliner with a mug of tea balanced on one knee. He’s still dressed in jeans and a flannel and his socks, staring off into what may or may not be their Christmas tree strung with popcorn and ornaments made from both a three-year-old’s glittery handprint and repurposed beer cans cut into stars. The television is tuned in to the weather channel where the meteorologist has gotten so worked up over the record temperature drop across southern Louisiana that he’s shed out of his suit jacket and started dabbing his temples with a handkerchief.

“You’re gonna be late,” Rust says simply, looking down again to turn the page in his book. “Especially if you were planning on gettin’ changed.”

Marty blinks and brings his lukewarm tea up to his mouth, still looking somewhere across the room, taking a long sip before speaking against the rim. “Probably just go on ahead like I am,” he says, chest rising and falling in a quiet sigh. “Not like I’m trying to pick up a date or anything anymore.”

He doesn’t say anything about last year, when he’d showed up alone wearing a ring on his left hand and some old blue-haired biddy had asked him if his wife was finally at peace in the arms of the Lord. _No ma’am,_ he’d said, a little too frazzled to get his pronouns straight, and then fumbled out an answer that made her cast him an odd look before benevolently patting his arm and hobbling away. _He usually don’t come out to things like this because all the frankincense they blow through here gives him migraines._

It’d been halfway true, at least.

Here and now, Rust only grunts at that last comment but keeps on reading in his book. Marty wants to ask what it is just to fuckin’ ask but Rust’s deep enough into the pages and has the cat curled up under one arm, so he doesn’t bother. Stands up instead and goes to dump his tea in the sink, then heads down the hall to get his jacket out of the bedroom closet and his keys from the table by the door.

“I’ll be back after midnight,” he says, stepping into his boots before bending at the waist to do up the laces. “You all good here?”

“Mmhmm,” Rust hums, and then glances up at Marty from under sleepy lids. He’s already in a pair of Marty’s sweatpants and some old t-shirt, comfortable and long since settled in for the night. “Drive safe.”

Marty has to catch the tip of his tongue between his teeth before he asks Rust to come. It’d be a stupid thing to say and he already knows what the answer would be, has always been, since the first Christmas after Rust hobbled over the threshold in his half-tied hospital gown and sat down on Marty’s couch and never did quite get up again.

“I will,” he promises, and then slips out the door into the chilled breath of Christmas Eve.

 

 

 

Marty sees the church lights from two blocks away, bright and golden and filtered through panes of stained glass. His eyes stray to a white dove in the window as he pulls into the parking lot and cuts his headlights, sitting there for a moment while a few other stragglers hurry toward the tall double doors garlanded with evergreen wreaths. The fiberglass nativity is lit up and nestled in a bed of straw, expanded now to include a pair of lambs and an angel, a sweet-faced donkey and the three wise men in their desert robes come to see the newborn king.

Father Brennan had surely outdone himself this year with all the trimmings but Marty can’t find reason to complain. If his five dollars dropped into the collection plate once a year went toward the purchase of a pre-lit ass, well, there have always been worse things money can buy. He keeps that thought in mind as he gets out of his car and hurries through the bitter cold, slipping into the church just as the choir lays into the opening chords of The First Noel.

He lets the doors silently close behind him and slips into the second to last pew per molded custom, right there at the back of the hall with the carved crucifix looming overhead on the wall. There’s only one other person at the far end of the red velvet cushioning and Marty feels confident he hasn’t disturbed anybody with the distance between them, settling down without bothering to shrug out of his coat. Despite the music rising up to the eaves of the building he can still hear the fountain of holy water bubbling mildly just a few feet away to his right.

When the first song ends the Father begins his sermon with a welcome and prayer, and from there the churchgoers’ voices echo back in forth with call and recitation. Marty’s never quite had all the Catholic catchphrases down pat and keeps mum for the most part, not speaking up unless somebody comes to him first. Despite everything and nearly ten years’ worth of these Christmas Eves spent in the church, he still feels like a man standing firmly balanced on the dividing line sometimes.

He was christened a long time ago, when he was nothing more than a red-faced squalling baby. It’d been his choice to take communion or not after that and his mother had never forced it upon him, though the disappointment had shone through on her face when he denied it. At the time a seven-year-old Marty had wanted to be more like his father, and Eric Hart hadn’t set foot in a church since his wedding day, so that was that and…here Marty is now.

Talking religion with Rust is still a lot like chasing your own ass in circles and Marty mostly learned to avoid the topic that first time he got scalded on a drawled tongue-lashing that had something to do with controlling the guilty and mindless sheep. He suspects Rust doesn’t hold an unwavering faith in much of anything he can’t see, much less anything resembling a hidden god, but he doesn’t quite know for sure. Other people with big words and shrewd minds would probably say Rust was some kind of neutral deity by his own right, come down to walk among the mortals in his scarred and beaten vessel, looking neither up nor down in his weary pilgrimage—only straight ahead.

Maybe the ambiguity Marty feels is a reflection more on himself than anything that has to do with the other man, but part of him still can’t shake the idea that he and Rust believe in _something_. Mutual illusions, his inner philosopher says in an all too familiar voice, and Marty physically turns his head to move away from the thought.

Maybe it’s just that neither of them have figured out what to call it yet.

Up on his pulpit Father Brennan has been reading scripture, reciting the story of the annunciation and Gabriel’s herald to a virgin mother. Marty feels himself slipping in and out of mindfulness, only partly listening to something he’s heard so many times in different forms. The clock ticks ever closer to midnight and his mind strays back toward home, idly wondering whether or not the grandbaby will keep believing in Santa Claus as she gets older. He smiles to himself when he remembers him and Maggie having to sit down with Macie after she turned ten and carefully explaining that she’d outgrown the North Pole’s age limit and presents would only be coming from mom and dad anymore. And then Audrey had called her sister a _dumb baby_ at Christmas dinner and it had all unraveled in the reality of truth from there.

“I’d like to say a few words apart from the book now, if that’s alright,” Father Brennan says from the front of the church with a small smile. “A homily for the holiday, if you will.”

He walks across the dais in his usual black cassock, undecorated except for a simple linen surplice layered over the top. He crosses his hands over his front as he walks to and fro, and the movement makes Marty think more of watching a southern reverend pace the pulpit before delivering the heat of holy fury, if only kinder and more subdued.

“Some of you are here with loved ones and others are here to worship alone,” Father Brennan says plainly. “Whether those precious to you have passed on or are merely far away, their memory stays with us and is celebrated here tonight during this joyous time. The Spirit presides over us all without discrimination.”

Somewhere from behind him one of the big church doors swings wide and then is quietly shut again. Marty hears a few footsteps on the tile floor but doesn’t turn to gawk at the newcomer, intent for the moment on listening to Father Brennan’s words.

“Nevertheless,” the priest says, pausing in the middle of the dais to open his hands as if in greeting. “Before I speak any further tonight, I want us all to be neighborly and greet each other, because I see faces new and old among us and hope we may exchange our best wishes and prayers for the season.”

There is a small commotion in the church hall as people turn their heads and stand, coughing and straightening coats and dropping pocketbooks down into the pews as they get up to shake hands with their neighbors. Father Brennan steps down off the pulpit as well, moving to clasp the wrinkled hands of an old woman settled in her wheelchair at the front of the aisle.

Marty looks to his left at the only other person in his pew but they’ve moved further up to greet a young family a few rows ahead. He stands tall and clears his throat, looking around for the nearest person, but before he can move too far he feels a hand grasp his shoulder from behind.

He turns with a little jolt, momentarily knocked off balance, and finds himself looking right into the last pair of eyes he’d expected to see here tonight.

“Peace be with you, neighbor,” Rust says with quiet humor woven through his voice, clasping Marty’s warm hands between his colder ones and leaning in to bump a kiss somewhere against his cheek.

Marty’s mouth falls open and his ears block out sound for a moment, and then it’s all rushing back quick as he keeps a hold on Rust with a church pew still wedged between them.

“You son of a bitch,” he growls, trying to sound mean but only laughing instead. “You goddamn rascal—Jesus, making me swear like this in church!”

“I didn’t make you say nothin’,” Rust says innocently, finally letting Marty go to walk around into his pew. He sits down and then looks up with clear eyes, the blue there full of gold from the decorated church lights. “How’s the show been going?”

Marty glares at him but sits down anyway, letting their knees bump together without much care. “It’s been going just fine,” he says, reaching up to undo the top button on his flannel shirt. “You got here before I could put in a prayer request for your heathen ass.”

“Hmm,” Rust muses, looking around as the other churchgoers slowly begin to settle down and exchange their last few greetings. “You go up and take communion yet?”

“No,” Marty says with a small sniff. “I don’t generally make a habit of it, myself.” He lowers his voice to something more akin to a whisper even though there’s nobody but the crucifix behind them close enough to hear. “Don’t tell anybody here, but I ain’t exactly Catholic.”

That rouses an amused sound somewhere in the heart of Rust’s chest. “Don’t worry, Marty,” he says. “Your secret is safe with me.”

Marty leans into Rust’s ear as Father Brennan climbs back up on his dais. “Color me real curious about what possessed you to drive up here out of the blue.”

Rust doesn’t say anything for a long moment, though his right hand manages to find Marty’s. “Maybe I wanted to see the lights,” he murmurs, and then they both look ahead as the choir breaks into song just past the stroke of midnight.  
  


* * *  
  
  


The first hour of Christmas morning is bitterly cold, the air like a wet, stinging slap against Marty’s cheeks and hands as he shoulders back outside into the parking lot with Rust at his side. The red Ford is parked one space over from his Cadillac and they stand in the pool of lamplight gathered in the empty spot between the cars, looking through the dark as people file out of the church and rush to get their engines and heaters going.

Rust has slightly curved in on himself, hunched against the wind like he’s in physical pain. Marty doesn’t remember him looking nearly as miserable when they were up in beginnings of Alaskan winter, but then again he’d been wearing a few layers more than just his flannel and leather jacket.

“We need to get you outta this weather and warmed back up,” he says, and wishes with a small pang that they’d driven together. He dawdles for a moment, curling his fingers in his jacket pockets. Feels caught between some impulse to explain himself and talk about his mother, then lets it slip away when he feels Rust’s eyes on him, probably the warmest damn thing for miles.

“You gonna make an appearance next year?” Marty asks instead, just a little warily.  

“May be,” Rust drawls, breaking the word in half with ease. He looks up at the stained glass almost appreciatively and then back to Marty. “If you’ll have me along.”

Marty smiles at that despite his shivering and dips his head. He pulls his keys from his pocket and leans forward to kiss Rust again, quickly but surely, not caring too much about who may be watching them.

“I’ll see you back home,” he says, and doesn’t turn back out onto the highway until he sees Rust’s headlights shining behind him.

  
  


It’s cold in the house, cold enough that Marty begrudgingly finds himself squinting at the hallway thermostat and cranking the heat up for the first time since last winter. He’s already buttoned up into a set of bonafide plaid pajamas, some real Sears and Roebuck catalog shit, which had always been the most ridiculous gift in the world until you’re freezing your ass off and suddenly they become one of modern man’s greatest commodities.  

Rust walks out of the bathroom smelling like cold water and mouthwash, slipped back into his sweatpants and some long-sleeved thermal shirt that’s started fraying at the hem, probably a relic from days spent on a fishing boat in the goddamn Bering Sea. Marty resolves to buy him some new fucking clothes, again, because Rust won’t ever do it himself unless something has truly fallen apart, but for the moment he only follows the other man into the bedroom and switches off the overhead light.

They make quick work of turning down the bed in a weatherworn routine and silently fold themselves under the covers, shifting around with creaking bones and punching pillows into something more comfortable. Only Marty’s bedside lamp is shining and he twists it off with a wide yawn, filled with some unspeakable relief to finally be tucked in bed with a warm body beside him.

That feeling lasts about five blissful, heavenly seconds, and then Rust’s cold feet are pressing up against Marty’s calves in a move he should’ve predicted, freezing even through the material of his flannel pajamas.

“Christ, it wouldn’t kill you to put on a pair of fuckin’ socks for once,” he hisses, though he doesn’t make any real move to shift away. “I’m going hypothermic just touching you—come over here.”

Even though Rust is the taller between the two of them, he doesn’t raise a fuss about being the smaller spoon tonight. He lets himself be pulled back against Marty’s chest and bends his knees some so another pair can slot in behind them.

Marty drapes an arm over Rust’s middle and lets the flat of his palm rest against a little paunch of stomach there, something that hadn’t appeared there overnight so much as gradually showed up over the years once Rust started absorbing a little more nourishment than just cheap beer and cigarettes. Turned out balanced nutrition was one hell of a fuckin’ thing.

Marty lets out a warm sigh against the back of Rust’s head and closes his eyes. Their breath measures out into something easy, mild and sleepy, and then Marty remembers something that had been loitering in the back of his mind the whole ride home from midnight mass.

“And peace be with you, asshole,” he says, gruff but warm all the same.

The last thing he hears before he falls asleep is a quiet huff of laughter only partway muffled by Rust’s pillow.  
  


* * *  
  


It’s not quite light out when Marty next opens his eyes. He’s too tired to turn over and look at the alarm clock or check his phone, but the room is shrouded in that weak-tea stain of predawn glow and he knows the sun won’t be out for some time yet. Everything seems oddly quiet around them, almost like a heavy blanket had been thrown over the eaves of the house

Rust stirs nearby, the fact only belied by his legs shifting some under the covers. Marty closes his eyes again and feels like no force on earth or heaven could pull him from this bed, contentment wrapped around them in perfect warmth.

“It’s snowing,” Rust says, voice still rough with sleep.

“You must be dreamin’,” Marty murmurs, mouth barely moving to form the words. He’s falling backward again under the veil of sweet nothingness. “We ain’t in Alaska.”

“I know where I am, and I’m telling you it’s snowing out there.”

“This part of Louisiana hasn’t seen snow in nigh on twenty years—it ain’t snowing.”  

“You wanna bet on it?” Rust asks.

Marty eyes snap open at that and he squints at the blinds covering their bedroom window. He can’t see shit from here but hasn’t quite mustered the energy or belief to go looking just yet. “I’ll bet you’ve got something smeared on your third eye this morning and that we ought to go back to sleep.”

Rust lies there for a moment and then slowly sits up, letting his feet hang over the side of the bed. His back pops when he stands, vertebrae stretching out, and Marty already misses his weight in the bed while Rust shuffles around the room and slips into a pair of Marty’s house shoes.

“Where’re you going?” he asks, and the only answer he gets is Rust’s back as he disappears down the hallway.

Marty can hear the front door unlock and open. He lies there and waits, ears pricked, staring hard at the ceiling with his brow furrowed. Idly ponders who’s the more bullheaded between the two of them and then wonders why he even bothered to wonder at all.

The door shuts again and Rust’s feet are coming back down the hallway. Marty finally starts to sit up, then, curiosity having got the best of him once more. Rust wastes no time with making a beeline straight for him with a cupped handful of something, and before Marty knows what’s what he’s got a wad of wet and freezing ice going down the front of his pajamas.

“What in the—you little shit!” he sputters, coming up off the bed like it’d sent an electric current through him. He trips on the corner of the bedsheet but doesn’t fall, and it’s that momentum that carries him through the house as he chases after Rust and finds himself tumbling through the front door to stare out at a thin blanket of white dusted across their lawn.

His breath fogs on the air as it rushes out of his lungs in the cold. Rust is standing beside him looking mighty pleased with himself, one hip cocked out while he surveys the driveway and their frozen rosebush at the corner of the porch.

“What’d I tell you,” he drawls, watching as Marty goes over to the wooden railing to touch some of the snow gathered on top. “Got yourself a white Christmas.”

The snow on the ground is hardly more than an inch but it’s real, realer than Marty’d thought by far. He turns halfway and looks at Rust from the corner of his eye, poised skeptical. “How’d you know it was snowing?”

“Just do,” Rust says simply. The corner of his mouth twitches just the slightest bit. “Chalk it up to my third eye.”

He steps forward to stand by Marty and they both look out across their quiet little neighborhood, still on the verge of daybreak. The Christmas bulbs somehow twinkle more now in the early light than they had last night, reflecting red and blue and green off tiny eddies of white. Marty might be pushing 60 now but he supposes this morning is probably one of the prettiest damn things he’s seen in a while.

The front of his pajama shirt is still wet and cold and they’re both barefoot, so he hooks two fingers down the waistband of Rust’s sweatpants and tugs lightly. “C’mon,” he says. “We need some fuckin’ coffee before you get any presents.”

“Didn’t know I was good enough to get anything,” Rust says, though he turns and follows Marty back into the warmth of the house.

“You weren’t,” Marty tells him. “I had to pull some strings.”

“Don’t you do that every year?” Rust asks, eyes gone heavy under his lashes, letting Marty press him up against the closed door once they’re inside again. He’s all cold hands and feet, though his breath is warm where it puffs against Marty’s cheek.

“Sure do,” Marty says, laughing softly as Rust leans in close and kisses him through a smile.  
  



End file.
